There was no National ad, it sounds like it was only a few local stations that had any HD-DVD ad at all & that hardly makes it a "massive ad campaign"!
As for the Blu-Ray ad, I don't remember anyone saying there would be one, unlike the supposed HD-DVD ad which was touted as being the beginning of a massive ad campaign.

Oh yea, Fox screwed them!
You have to be kidding, if they had bought ad time at $2.7 Million for 30 seconds there is no doubt at all that Fox would have played it.

I'm guessing the ad you saw was for American Gangster, that was not a HD-DVD ad it was for the SD-DVD.
There was about a 1 second flash at the end that said it was available on HD-DVD combo disc that's hardly a massive HD-DVD ad campaign!

There was no national ad & no matter how you try to spin it with all the build up of the supposed "massive ad campaign starting with the Super Bowl" it didn't happen.

The question now is why, did Paramount & Universal tell them something that made them pull the ad?